Society

The Comoran people are a blend of African, Arab, and MalayoIndonesian
elements. A few small communities, primarily in Mahoré, speak kibushi,
a Malagasy dialect. The principal Comoran Swahili dialect, written in
Arabic script, is related to the Swahili spoken in East Africa but is
not easily intelligible to East African Swahili speakers. Classical
Arabic is significant for religious reasons, and French remains the
principal language with which the Republic of the Comoros communicates
with the rest of the world.

A number of ethnically distinguishable groups are found: the Arabs,
descendants of Shirazi settlers, who arrived in significant numbers in
the fifteenth century; the Cafres, an African group that settled on the
islands before the coming of the Shirazi; a second African group, the
Makoa, descendants of slaves brought by the Arabs from the East African
coast; and three groups of Malayo-Indonesian peoples--the Oimatsaha, the
Antalotes, and the Sakalava, the latter having settled largely on Mahoré.
Intermarriage has tended to blur the distinctions among these groups,
however. Creoles, descendants of French settlers who intermarried with
the indigenous peoples, form a tiny but politically influential group on
Mahoré, numbering no more than about 100 on that island. They are
predominantly Roman Catholic and mainly cultivate small plantations. In
addition, a small group of people descended in part from the Portuguese
sailors who landed on the Comoro Islands at the beginning of the
sixteenth century are reportedly living around the town of Tsangadjou on
the east coast of Njazidja.

Shirazi Arab royal clans dominated the islands socially, culturally,
and politically from the fifteenth century until the French occupation.
Eleven such clans lived on Njazidja, where their power was strongest,
and their leaders, the sultans or sharifs, who claimed to be descendants
of the Prophet Muhammad, were in a continual state of war until the
French occupation. Two similar clans were located on Nzwani, and these
clans maintained vassals on Mahoré and Mwali after the Sakalava wiped
out the local nobles in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries . Although the clan system was weakened by the economic and
social dislocations of the colonial era, the descendants of clan nobles
continue to form a major portion of the educated and propertied classes.
The pre-independence rivalry of Said Mohamed Cheikh and Prince Said
Ibrahim, leaders, respectively, of the conservative Parti Vert and the
Parti Blanc, was interpreted by some as a revival of old clan
antagonisms. Yet many descendants of nobles live in poverty and
apparently have less influence socially and politically on Nzwani than
on Njazidja.

The present-day elite, although composed in part of those of noble
ancestry who took advantage of the opportunities of the cash crop
economy established by the French, is mainly defined in terms of wealth
rather than caste or descent. This focus on wealth is not unusual,
considering that the original Shirazi settlers themselves were traders
and that the precolonial sultans were actively involved in commerce.
Conspicuous consumption continues to mark the lifestyle of the elite.

Especially well regarded are those individuals who hold the grand
mariage, often after a lifetime of scrimping and saving. This
wedding ceremony, which can cost as much as the equivalent of US$20,000
to US$30,000, involves an exchange of expensive gifts between the
couple's families and feasts for an entire village. Although the gift
giving and dancing that accompany the grand mariage have helped
perpetuate indigenous arts in silversmithing, goldsmithing, folk song,
and folk dance, the waste involved has disastrous consequences for an
economy already short on domestic resources. A ban or curb on the grand
mariage was on the agenda of many reformers in the period preceding
the radical regime of Ali Soilih, who himself had taken the almost
unheard-of step of declining to participate in the ritual. However, the
efforts of the Soilih government to restrict the custom aroused great
resentment, and it was restored to its preeminent place in Comoran
society almost immediately after Soilih was deposed in 1978. Although
its expense limits the number of families that can provide their sons
and daughters a grand mariage, the ritual is still used as a
means of distinguishing Comoran society's future leaders. Only by
participating in the ceremony is a Comoran man entitled to participate
in his village's assembly of notables and to wear the mharuma,
a sash that entitles him to enter the mosque by a special door. Few, if
any, candidates win election to the National Assembly without a grand
mariage in their pasts. For these reasons in particular, critics of
traditional Comoran society condemn the grand mariage as a
means of excluding people of modest resources from participating in the
islands' political life.

Those who can afford the pilgrimage to Mecca are also accorded
prestige. The imams who lead prayers in mosques form a distinct elite
group.

Despite the weakening of the position of the Shirazi elite, one
observer reports that in many subtle ways old distinctions persist. The
descendants of slaves, formally emancipated in 1904, are mostly
sharecroppers or squatters, working the land that belonged to their
ancestors' former owners, although some have gone abroad as migrant
laborers (a greatly restricted option since Madagascar's expulsion of
thousands of Comorans in the late 1970s). Men of "freeborn"
families choose "freeborn" wives, holding, if possible, a grand
mariage; but if they take second wives, these women often are of
slave ancestry.